India: Reining 'rosy' disclosures.

Pratap Ravindran on why forward-looking statements need to be encouraged and regulated.

THE communication of forward-looking data to shareholders is not, as of now, a subject of pronounced public interest or regulatorial attention in India with listed companies entirely free to publicise through the mass and other media the most extravagant of their claims.

However, it may safely be predicted that this practice will, sooner than later, come under the scrutiny, inept though this may prove, of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), given its massive misuse in the manipulation of the secondary capital market.

While we wait for that day, we may as well amuse ourselves by pondering the significance of the recommendation made recently by a Securities and Exchange …